Uganda is currently hosting over 1.6 million refugees, the highest number of in the country’s history, receiving emergency arrivals from East and Central Africa.
Refugees are often depicted them as terrorists and burdens to society and most media stories did not give any prominence to the lives of the refugees.
As the Ethical Journalism Network's African Representative I was invited to speak at the Expo and give two workshop’s to provide practical guidance to the young journalists using our guidelines on migration reporting, the EJNfive-point test to hate-speech and other resources.
Both of the guidelines are available in Swahili and over 30 other languages. The EJN will contribute to the “Refugee Reporting Handbook for Journalists” that the Media Challenge Initiative will publish in February 2019.
- How can journalists better cover labour migration?
- What are the ethical issues that arise?
- Should journalists ever become advocates for reform?
These were some of the themes the EJN's Tom Law discussed with Jordanian journalist SawsanTabazah last week.
Sawsan was one of the first journalists to take part in the EJN/ILO fellowship to support labour migration reporting in Jordan and other states in the region.
Tom and Sawsan also spoke on a panel discussion about labour migration reporting with the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) and International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) at the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) summit on 1 December 2018.
- Ethical Storytelling: Journalism and Media Literacy. Why are some journalists sceptical about media literacy? How can transparency about the process and ethics of journalism and its accountability mechanisms become a feature of its structure, design and storytelling techniques? Read the full blog here.
- Democratic leaders give historic commitment based on Declaration on Information and Democracy. On Sunday 11 November, EJN President, Aidan White, spoke at the Paris Peace Forum, to support the International Declaration on Information and Democracy along with seven heads of state and the head of UNESCO and the Council of Europe. Read the full press release here.
- Indira Lakshmanan: On Journalism as a Public Service and Holding the Government Accountable (Pulitzer Centre)
- Alert! Alert! The information demands on the modern digital journalist are overwhelming and leading to burnout (Nieman Lab)
PRESS FREEDOM
- 'Killed for speaking the truth': tributes to nine journalists murdered in 2018 (Guardian)
WOMEN IN NEWS
- This journalist created a system to make sure more female experts got on air (Poynter)
- It's Almost Impossible to Be a Mom in Television News (Atlantic)
- Calls-to-action: Why European newsrooms should focus on media literacy (GEN)
CLIMATE CHANGE
- News Networks Fall Short on Climate Story as Dolphins Die on the Beach (NYT)
GLOBAL ETHICS NEWS
AFRICA
NIGERIA: Like. Share. Kill. Nigerian police say false information on Facebook is killing people (BBC)
AMERICAS
MEXICO: A Journalist Was Killed in Mexico. Then His Colleagues Were Hacked. (New York Times) US: Reporters At Bloomberg News Are Worried About Michael Bloomberg’s Potential Presidential Run (BuzzFeed) US: Is History Being Too Kind to George H.W. Bush? (Politico) US: The Mayor’s Office Asked Select Reporters To Sign Non-Disclosure Agreements And Let A Police Officer Determine What They Publish (Willamette Week)
ASIA
- Fake news a serious threat, say journalists at Asia-Pacific (Times of India) CHINA: China’s Most Popular App Is Full of Hate (Foreign Policy) INDIA: India is increasingly jailing its young for online posts that ‘offend’ politicians. The impact on their lives and families is devastating (Live Mint) PHILIPPINES: Memo from a ‘Facebook nation’ to Mark Zuckerberg: You moved fast and broke our country. (Recode)
EUROPE
FRANCE: French opposition parties are taking Macron’s anti-misinformation law to court (Poytner) UK: Northern Irish journalists left on police bail for months say they feel like 'pawns in state attack on press freedom' (Press Gazette)
MIDDLE EAST
SAUDI ARABIA: UN human rights chief says international probe into Jamal Khashoggi killing needed (Press Gazette)
EJN ANNUAL REPORT 2017/2018
The Ethical Journalism Network Annual Report for 2017 and the first months of 2018 covers a period in which the buzzwords “fake news” and “post-truth” provided a misleading but appropriate focus for the news industry.
In recent months the challenges of a flawed information landscape have been dramatically exposed with Google, Facebook and other internet giants being called to account for their failure to promptly deal with the pollution of the information landscape.
The EJN's Trust in Ethical Journalism reports looks at how the communications revolution is continuing to pose more questions than answers over a public crisis of confidence, both in democracy and in sources of public information.
Can 2018 be the year when ethical journalism, a human instinct beyond encoding and algorithmic definition, finally gets the recognition it deserves?
